07:00 I'm lying in bed - Lois is still asleep beside me, and I get a chance to think quietly through yesterday's events, and try to make sense of them.
Lois had been getting a bit overtired this week with Christmas baking etc - and then last night's "party" organised by her church overstimulated her, and I had to quite firm, and try to sit on her (figuratively speaking) to calm her down, after she arrived home pretty late at night - 9pm - simply buzzing with excitement, and brandishing a big unopened bottle of Cockburn's port, and offering to get out a couple of glasses.
flashback to last night: Lois arrives back from her church party,
overexcited, and brandishing an unopened bottle of Cockburn's port
They say old age is like a second childhood, don't they, and I couldn't help thinking about the truth of all that, as Lois buzzed her way excitedly through the evening last night, and then suddenly as we got into bed she just "went out like a light", zonking out as soon as she touched the sheets, just like a small child after his or her birthday party.
What's the good of that, eh? No chance to do our customary bedtime "look back at the day" ending with a "lessons learned" session and "Five key takeaways" (I always say that at the end of every day you can find five if you look hard enough, so prove me wrong, I challenge you!), followed by our regular "going forward" run-down of the next day's duties, events etc, then a "wrap-up" session at the end, with the chance to ask questions.
Oh well, I couldn't have done anything without Lois, so I made a mental note for us to do it in the morning instead, if I can remember, that is !!!!
And I recall that, at 10:15 pm last night, I finally gave up and quietly stashed away my visual aids - "They'll keep!", I told myself - and then I just fell asleep myself.
08:00 It's 8 'clock, and Lois finally wakes up and I go downstairs and come back with 2 cups of tea.
This afternoon I'm going to have to be firm with her. I know she's got plans to make a big mincemeat and apple tart, but I shall have to insist that, only after it's all baked of course, she comes upstairs and takes a nap with me, to calm herself down haha!
I wasn't at last night's church party myself, but I could tell from the pictures that it wasn't as wild as originally advertised, and I could see that the promised "Iranian dancing" would have been a non-starter given the density of desks in the meeting-room where the party was held.
flashback to yesterday: last night's church party
at Pershore meeting-room
The board on the back wall advertising the 3 hymn numbers to be sung at the end of the evening also suggested that a degree of sobriety and decorum was the order of the day. Nevertheless it's clear that the evening was awash with oodles of happy chatting and adventurous eating. A good time was evidently had by all, and the church's new Iranian members were given a really warm welcome, which was the important thing isn't it. Let's be fair!
Incidentally, Steve, our American brother-in-law, says he has added "church party" to his list of oxymorons, which seems appropriate - but should it be "oxymora", though? I think I should be told, but not till after Christmas obviously. Let me have Christmas haha!
Shakespeare of course was the master of the oxymoron. Recall this speech from Romeo in the early stages of his affair with Juliet, when she's not returning his passion. He just can't get any reaction out of her, other than the occasional "Naff off!" (however Shakespeare would have phrased that in his quaint Elizabethan language!).
Leonardo DiCaprio as Romeo (1996)
And oxymorons can be quietly amusing also, like the old favourites "military intelligence" and "business ethics".
Tremendous fun, though, isn't it!
14:00 The afternoon goes well. The mincemeat-and-apple tart is baked and got ready, and we get a couple of hours in bed too afterwards, which is nice. And then in the evening we each have a piece of the tart, plus a couple of glasses of the Cockburn's port to keep us in a good mood.
What's not to like haha!
20:00 A good day, but as a result of all the high living, what with the nap, the tart and the port, I don't think I'm as sharp as I usually am when the time comes to watch our quiz of the day: another special Christmas edition of one of our favourite TV quizzes, Only Connect, which tests lateral thinking.
Lois is "on fire", though, and she's as sharp as ever, which is interesting.
There's a couple of nice "picture rounds" tonight. This is one strictly for the Latin-language buffs, which would be me.
Can you guess what would be the fourth picture in this sequence? The "Dandies" team have the answer to this one.
If I tell you that picture no.1 and picture no. 3 are Canadian-American actress Sandra Oh, and picture 2 is some Japanese tempura, can you see the sort of thing that's wanted as picture no.4 in the sequence???
Yes, they are all English-language almost-sound-alike references to Cicero's famous Latin lament "O tempora o mores" ("What [awful] times we live in, and what [awful] morals we have!"). And so Lewis Barn of the Dandies team suggests, for picture no.4, a picture of several moray eels, which presenter Victoria Coren-Mitchell judges to be an acceptable answer.
So yes, Cicero's famous lament "O tempora, o mores!" becomes simply "Oh tempura oh moray-eels", which I suppose you could in some circumstances say, for instance, to a waiter in a Japanese restaurant, maybe? But tell me what YOU think!
Another question.....
Can you see the link between the 4 people pictured below at the bottom of the screen? "The Peacocks" team gets this answer.
Out of ideas, are we?
Well, what if I tell you that the four people pictured are pianist-composer Philip Glass, Indian cricketer Rishabh Pant, Haitian rapper Wyclef Jean, and Labour MP Clare Short?
Obvious now isn't it! They've all got names which are singular versions of plural things-we-wear, haven't they. Mostly trousers apart from the glasses for picture no.1 . And although glasses are obviously chiefly spectacles, apparently you can also have "glass trousers", as it turns out !!!
Who knew????!!!!!
Oh dear! Iggy Pop - yes, let's not think about that one, shall we. Not just before bedtime, anyway haha!
22:00 We go to bed - but before we go to sleep we have one more go at doing part of our usual meeting - and here's the key takeaway. Not something for now, obviously, but in the future could we perhaps install a projection system and screen for our bedroom ceiling, plus remote control obviously, so that we could show Powerpoint slides and all that malarkey, without getting out of bed?
Something like this, but without all the people, needless to say!
It's worth thinking about isn't it!
I wonder......!!!!!!
Zzzzzzzzz!!!!
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